1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to document handling and sorting equipment and particularly to handling equipment which accepts a bundle of documents and delivers them to follow-on equipment to be sorted, read, printed and the like. It relates especially to handling bundles of documents and transporting the bundles in such a way that they are prepared so that subsequent stages of paper handling apparatus can receive and treat the documents individually.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The prior art to which this invention most closely relates includes devices for jogging or shaking a box or hopper to impart vibrations to documents placed in the box or hopper. The documents are aligned along one edge by the vibrations which also reduce any tendencies of the documents to stick together before sorting. A problem with joggers or other shaking devices is that, despite attempts to isolate vibrations, they still impart undesirable vibrations to other parts of the sorting machines. In addition, these prior art joggers add considerable noise to the immediate vicinity of the machine.
A common problem with which prior art machines have dealt has been that of overcoming friction between the documents being sorted and the floor of the hopper. As indicated before, one approach has been to jog or shake the box or hopper. Besides the disadvantages of increased vibrations and noise in the machine, this method has not provided the desired mobility of documents across the hopper floor. As the sizes of hoppers have been increased and the sizes of stacks of documents have also been increased, changes in the total friction represented have increased so that these prior art devices have been less effective than desired while vibrations and noise have increased greatly.